To birdcrazy - Some people just don't understand that mental disorders are REAL, no less real than diabetes... you have these monsters in your head and it's a lifetime learning process to deal with them, because you can't make them go away completely.... it's just hard for some people to grasp. They're like "Why can't you just control yourself?"... Even after giving my SO a book to show him "Look this is a real thing!!" - examples of people who also have bipolar and do the same kind of stuff I do - he still has a hard time understanding that I can't just do the "mind over matter" thing (which he lives by).... really, mind over matter is a pretty lame idea when your mind doesn't function correctly in the first place!! So when I get physically sick as a result of an episode, he thinks I can just suck it up and play through the pain. He's trying so hard to understand, but how well can you really understand when it's a totally foreign concept? I dunno...

Makes me realize now that many years ago when my lil brother was diagnosed with (among other things) bipolar, depression, general mood disorder, narcissism (yeah that's a real thing too!!), I wasn't being fair to him. And I was going through some of that myself and I kept thinking that he can control himself if he really wants to. But that's just the thing - you can't control your emotions, but you can control how you deal with them.... easier said than done, right?